Friday, June 15, 2012

Review: Mass Effect – Tali

Rounding out the first series of Big Fish Toys’ Mass Effect
figures is Tali’Zorah nar Rayya, the Quarian machinist more commonly known
simply as Tali. As a main squad member who appears in all three Mass Effect
games, Tali is a solid choice for the first wave. Read the review to find out
how Big Fish Toys handles everyone’s favorite Quarian mechanical genius
pilgrim.

Once again, we’ve received our generic Series I packaging
marked by a Tali sticker on the front of the clamshell. While overall I like
the packaging, I’m not a huge fan of generic packaging. There’s a lot of grey
area on the front of the cardback/insert that could have been used for some
awesome individual character art. For me, it adds up to overall good packaging,
but a missed opportunity for great packaging.

Given the character of Tali, we won’t be seeing a face
sculpt. While removable helmets/facemasks are almost always cool, I’m glad Big
Fish Toys didn’t attempt to take liberties with the character. What we get is a
nicely done breather mask with Tali’s signature purple hood. The costume has
some great sculpting with well-made buckles, belts, pouches and the like. All
in all it’s a nice representation of the character.

Tali comes with the customary stand, an M-27 Scimitar
shotgun and a decent omni-tool. The shotgun has once again blown me away (pun
intended) with great sculpting and nice paint. Very accurate to the game. The
omni-tool looks good, but doesn’t seem to be removable. It has a slight
appearance that it might be removable, but when I fiddled with it, I got the
sinking feeling that if I removed it, it would never go back on. Unfortunate,
as the shotgun should clearly be a two-handed weapon. The other disappointment
is on Tali’s leg, in the form of a non-removable knife strapped to her boot. If
Hasbro can handle removable knives on 3 ¾” Joes, it shouldn’t be a problem to
do a removable boot knife in this scale.

Big Fish has once again provided a decent number of points
of articulation, but managed to do it in a rather limiting way. Tali’s sculpt
doesn’t seem to indicate that the designers had any particular pose in mind.
She ends up looking best in a sort of relaxed-neutral pose. I would like Tali
to pull of some semi-bad-ass looking by wielding that two-handed shotgun, but
the limited articulation and omni-tool make that a bit difficult. The neutral
pose doesn’t look bad, it’s just no overly exciting.

All in all, just like the rest of the Series I figures, Tali
is at the same time a great figure and really sub-par. It’s a nice looking
piece of plastic with a lot of missed opportunities to be great. But in the
end, Tali is Tali, and your Mass Effect crew just won’t be complete without
her.